Christmas Present
by TheMacUnleashed
Summary: It's the Christmas Eve after Sam left for Stanford, and Dean is alone. Then a ghost decides to show him the error of his way, and instill some Christmas cheer into him. It doesn't go very well... crack!fic.


**Title: **Christmas Present  
**Summary: **It's the Christmas Eve after Sam left for Stanford, and Dean is alone. Then a ghost decides to show him the error of his way, and instill some Christmas cheer into him. It doesn't go very well.  
**Author: **TheMacUnleashed  
**Genres: **Crack!fic, humour, parody –maybe crossover, although I really only borrowed the idea from "A Christmas Carol," not the characters, setting, etc.**  
Warnings: **Strong language, and some drinking and mentions of sexual situations.**  
Disclaimer: **I don't own Supernatural. The idea of ghosts visiting people on Christmas Eve and making them change their ways also isn't mine –a wise old man named Charles Dickens came up with it.  
**Notes: **First _Supernatural_ fanfiction, so reviews and concrit are very appreciated.

* * *

"Wake up, Dean Winchester, and face what I have to show you!"

Dean didn't quite process what the voice was saying, but since his sleep was lighter than a day that the weathermen had predicted to be cold and cloudy, the very sound of it made his instantly jump awake, and made his hand snatch out and close instinctively around the holster of the gun he had left on the cheap, wooden nightstand, the one next to the cheap, probably bug-infested, hotel bed. "Wha-? Who's there?" He winced, and then swore as a drumbeat of pain began to cheerfully pound away in the inside of his skull.

"And _that_ is exactly what I've come here to prevent in the future." Gradually, Dean's vision cleared up enough so that he could view the owner of the smug voice.

He tightened his hand on the gun as he pointed it at what appeared to be a spirit: It was transparent, which was his first clue, and it was dressed like a man from another time, wearing an old, worn-out suit. And it was floating at the foot of his bed, which was also a damn good sign that it wasn't exactly alive.

His father had drilled it into him that they weren't supposed to fire guns in motel rooms (or at ghosts, although they usually did buy a bit of time, even if it didn't take care of them permanently) even if it did seem as though a few bullet holes would go nicely with the chapped wallpaper, and the bed's splintery headboard, but he was more than willing to put in a few shots into the ghost-thing, especially if it meant being able to go back to sleep afterwards. "Did I forget to salt somewhere? 'Cause I was pretty sure that I had this place as secured as the fuckin' White House."

"You broke the salt line of the door when you stumbled in, drunk as doornail." The spirit sounded impatient, and Dean got the idea that if it were alive, and if it were standing on the ground, instead of floating several inches above it, it'd have been tapping its foot.

"'Drunk as a doornail?' That doesn't make any sense." Dean carefully leaned back against the headboard, taking care to have the gun pointed right where he wanted it to be. "And anyway, why was I drinking? I don't drink on hunts. That pisses off dad."

His visitor sighed. "That gun won't do you any good, as you know perfectly well. And you were drinking because you _had_ finished that hunt, and managed to get so beat up doing so, that you decided to get alcohol from the nearest bar to drown out your injuries."

"Oh, yeah. Nasty ghost, that one was. I hate it when their bones get dumped in quarries. Or anything with rocks, really." Dean lowered a hand to his chest, carefully checking the bruising, with one hand still aiming the gun. This ghost, dressed neat and properly, without the haggard look that the dead tended to possess, had no visible weapons and wasn't acting like he would be a threat; however, Dean had long since accepted the fact that you could trust very few people who were alive, and even less that weren't. "Then why wasn't dad here?"

The ghost let out an irritated huff of breath, which was quite a feat, considering that Dean wasn't even sure if ghosts even needed to breathe or not. "It'll come to you."

"What's that supposed to –oh. Right." This had been a solo hunt. And on Christmas Eve, too. Dad was somewhere down south; Mississippi, he thought, and Sam was where he had been for the past four months, at Stanford. "Damn ghosts just love haunting around this time of year, don't they?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that. Nor am I at liberty to waste time explaining such trivial matters to one who should know better." The ghost swooped suddenly, coming almost face-to-face with Dean, who took careful aim with the gun, and was just about to pull the trigger when it pulled itself away. "Come with me, Dean Winchester! Come and face your past mistakes!"

"Yeah, no. I don't think so." Holding the gun steady, Dean glanced around, looking for something –anything, really—to ease his current headache. Unfortunately, he had neglected to leave a bottle of Advil, or even a bottle of water out to help with the hangover that he probably should have seen coming. The closest thing that he could see on the cluttered nightstand was his container of holy water.

Shrugging to himself, he picked it up and took a swig from it. Well, he'd be damned if sinning didn't taste good –granted, it was just normal water with a small blessing in Latin muttered over it with a few holy symbols scattered about, but when your mouth feels as though you just made out with a sand sculpture, anything that resembles a liquid is going to taste good in it.

The ghost gave a hiss of annoyance. "Is nothing sacred with you?"

Dean, having drained out half of the water (he wasn't foolish enough to be caught without at least a small supply; that was the mistake of a rookie hunter, which he certainly was _not_) wiped his mouth, relieved that the headache had lessened, if only slightly. "Nope."

And then, he barely had time to react as it swooped down upon him and grabbed him by the arm. In the split second in between its launching itself at him and it lifting him several feet above his bed, he did what he probably should have done in the first place, and what he probably would have done, if he hadn't been so hung-over, and grabbed the tiny vessel of salt, just another one of the melee of objects on the nightstand. He pulled off the cap with his teeth, biting down deep into the metal, and overturned the contents onto the spirit, which hissed in annoyance and disappeared.

Dean fell back onto the bed, which creaked in annoyance beneath his weight. He glanced at the pile of salt which had fallen into the middle of the bed, and the now empty canister. "Oh, shi-"

"Must you swear so much?" This time, there was no split second for Dean to react, and the ghost yanked him off of the bed, and pulled him to the window at a speed which felt faster than that of which a hunt could turn from good to bad.

Dean ignored the persnickety ghost, and snarled several more words that a respectable man wouldn't have said in polite company as he reached downwards and tried to pick the gun back up, and not quite managing.

This time, it was the ghost's turn to ignore the comments. Holding the struggling Dean in firmly in one arm, he flew him across the tiny motel room, barely stopping in time to not hit the wall, and then reached out and unlatched the window, and threw it open with his one free arm. "This would go over so much easier if you quit your struggling," the ghost informed him.

"If you expect a Winchester not to struggle when he's being taken against his will, then you're- damn it!" In his attempt to get away, he hadn't even realized his foot had grazed along the carefully strewn out line of salt covering the windowsill.

He didn't actually look at the ghost's face, but its voice gave off a definite sense of being pleased. "Thank you. That makes leaving all the more simple."

The window was small, and so Dean wasn't quite sure how both of them managed to fit through it, but he did know that one moment he almost had a foot on the ground, and was carefully taking his small iron charm from its hiding place in his back pocket, and the next he was outside, next to the run-down window of the run-down New Hampshire town that was now free of the spirit that had been terrorizing it on and off for a few decades. Of course, as his luck would have it, a new ghost seemed to have decided to pop right back up in its place.

The charm that he had been about to use to buy himself a little time slipped from his hands. He swore. It wasn't expensive, and it wasn't pretty (just a small blob of iron that meant something in God-knew-what ancient civilization –he had bought it after his _good_ bit of spirit-repelling iron had been lost to some lake-inhabiting creature) but it was _his_, and it had also probably been his best chance at getting away from the thing who was currently clutching him.

"If you don't bring me back inside and put me down right now, I swear I won't rest until I've salted and burned your ass to hell." Actually, he probably would have done that anyways, but what the ghost didn't know wouldn't hurt it.

"I daresay that you'd do that no matter when I brought you back. And I will, after you've learned your lesson." It loosened its tight grip around his waist.

On reflex he jerked away from the thing, trying to get back to the window, but it didn't let go of his hand. "Come now, Dean. Would you really want me to let go of me right now?"

"Well, it seems like that'd be a nice thing to do." Dean craned his head around to look at the ghost, and in doing so, accidentally looked down.

Holy shit.

He was flying.

Or floating. Apparently, he was still more hung over than he was realizing, since that was something he should have observed in the first place.

The second-story room he had gotten for the night hadn't seemed too high up when he had first entered it, and first looked out to the ground below, but its height now seemed to be easily within range of the Empire State Building's. His stomach began an acrobatic routine as he looked down below. "Are you going to explain what you're doing, or should I just kick your ass and get down from here?"

Sounding annoyed, the ghost replied, "I've been _trying_ to tell you what I was doing ever since I came here. You just weren't listening."

He paused, supposedly for dramatic effect, but when he realized just how serious Dean was about getting down, he quickly continued on. "You see, I've noticed that you have quite a habit of getting yourself drunk-"

"Hey, it's not a _habit_," interrupted Dean, "I hardly ever do when I'm on hunts. And when I'm going to drive. I'm a damn more responsible drinker than half the rest of the population out there." He normally couldn't care less if someone called him that, but it was different when he was facing a ghost who had dragged him out of a perfectly peaceful, if slightly hung-over, sleep.

"Well, you do it often enough to get my attention. And that's not all. You also have a habit of having casual liaisons with a variety of women scattered across the continental USA."

"Actually, there was that one time in Hawaii-"

"That doesn't matter! You must see the evil of your ways, and repent, or else your soul will be doomed to wander the Earth forever! Do you want that?"

"Well, no, but that's a moot point." Dean was beginning to think that this was all some drunken dream, which would have been much easier if he didn't believe in ghosts. "And are you telling me that a bit of loving outside the marriage, and having a few drinks now and then is going to get me doomed? 'Cause I've exterminated an awful lot of things over the years, and I've heard an awful lot about where they came from, and yet that theory never came up."

"Perhaps you simply haven't been around enough. Now come, the night grows short and our journey is long!" It tugged his hand, and they began to float away from the window. Thankfully, they weren't moving quickly, but in Dean's opinion, moving at any speed when both feet weren't firmly planted on the ground was moving too quickly.

"Okay, I'm not the most well-read person, but hasn't this been done before?" Actually, if this was happening to Sammy, it probably would have been the first thing to enter his head, but Dean's mind didn't automatically connect everything to an old, outdated book, or play, or whatever it was. "Charles Dickens? Scrooge? 'Whoo, whoo, three ghosts are going to come for a friendly chat and show you all the things that you did in life to screw yourself over, but it isn't too late to repent for your sins?'"

The ghost glanced down at him. "You should know well enough that there's a grain of truth to every story. Although three is a bit much. You're stuck with me for the night, I'm afraid."

"I guess that means I can call you Present. Unless you want to tell me your real name?" Dean looked hopefully at his captor. Knowing his real name would make searching the records to find a grave to destroy so much easier.

It sighed. "Well, that's hardly a dignified title, and hardly one that I've earned… but if it makes you happy, then fine, Dean Winchester. I can be the Ghost of Christmas Present."

"Damn right it makes me happy!" Not really, but hey, he'd get what pleasure he could out of this situation. And it wasn't an inherently pleasant one to begin with: He had no weapons, he was floating what looked to be one hell of a distance above the ground, and he was stuck with some crazy spirit that wanted to lecture him about morals.

And it was fucking _cold_. He had fallen asleep in his clothes and his jacket, but that still wasn't designed for cruising around at high altitudes during a New Hampshire winter.

"Do you know what time it is?" They had moved at least three feet away from the window by now, and Dean's nerves weren't getting any better.

"No clue."

"It's 1:00 in the morning, on Christmas day, right on the hour! Can't you hear the bells ringing?"

Dean frowned. "Nope."

Present sounded annoyed. "Well then, fine. I guess we should just start our soul-searching journey, then."

"Yeah, about that. Is there any chance we could just, y'know, get into my car and drive around, and you could just show me whatever the hell you're going to from there?"

"No. Cars are silly devices for mortals. They are slow and cumbersome, and it would be foolish to waste our short time together out waiting for other drivers to move on some main road." They were moving with an increased speed at the moment, and Dean was mortified to realize that he was clutching the ghost's hand like a scared little girl.

"Well, you see, the whole flying thing really doesn't sit too well with me." _Don't look down, don't look down…_

"We all must face trials of the spirit. Learn to be brave and to-"

"I hate to interrupt you, but we're about to fly straight into the wires."

"Oh, yes. You mortals are rather frail." It swooped upwards at the very last moment, narrowly avoiding getting them entangled in the electrical wires stretching along the side of the road. "Is that better?"

Dean resisted the urge to look downwards to the near-disaster, knowing that it would just make him feel even more ill than he already was. "No, not really."

"Maybe you should stop complaining, and just face what I have to show you! Face your casual relations, and your drinking habits. Face how you grow apart from your family, and from those you love!"

Dean glared at it. "Hey, let's get something straight here. I don't do the whole love thing. No. I'm-"

"A big, brave hunter who is emotionally unattached from everything? Hardly." The ghost snorted, a sound which didn't seem right coming from his supposedly dignified persona. "What about… this?"

There was a rush of cold air, a flash of light (although that was probably inside Dean's head, some sort of hallucination –actually, he wouldn't be surprised if this whole thing was just a result of some bad bar food) and suddenly they weren't floating over that small New Hampshire town, whose name Dean couldn't recall.

"What? That's impossible. Ghosts don't travel that fast; they just _don't_." Really, he could accept almost anything, but this was a bit over the top.

"Well, I do. Now tell me, do you recall that girl?" The ghost pointed downwards, to where a girl was walking and laughing with her friends.

"Her?" Dean squinted; they were floating a good deal above her, and it was dark out, and he was rather disoriented. "Hey, isn't that Lisa? Lisa! Up here!"

"Don't be foolish." The ghost glared at him. "She can't hear us, or see us. And good, you remember her -although are you sure you're not confusing her with one of the other many women whose hearts you've broken?"

Dean chose to ignore the last sentence, instead reminiscing about the great times that he had had with Lisa. "Yeah, that's right. Spent a weekend with her –an _awesome_ weekend—and then dad an' Sammy an' I were off on the horned serpent case." Dean smiled slightly, almost nostalgic despite the unusual circumstances. "She was the yoga instructor, I believe. The things that she taught me…"

"That's quite enough. Do you know why I brought you here?"

"Nope." He hadn't thought of Lisa in awhile, actually.

"Well, I can tell you that you never called her like you said you would!" Present sounded angry at this fact, even though it was hardly earth-shattering news to Dean, who simply raised an eyebrow.

"That's why you brought me to see her? I haven't called any girls after we broke town since I was in high school, during that short period when I believed in romance. And trust me, I'm not about to now."

"Oh, really? Perhaps that will change once our little journey has been completed."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Present laughed, a sound which floated around and seemed to echo so high up in the air. "You'll see, Dean Winchester, you'll see!"

There was another flash of light, which really didn't serve to alleviate the hangover that Dean was still feeling, and they appeared in a small, dark room filled with dolls and a single living figure.

"Recognize him?" Present sounded smug. "A man who is, like you, alone on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas day! A man who will probably spend his time drinking, and nursing battle injuries from going around, and destroying evil. A man who did his best to raise you, but never managed to instill too much holiday cheer into your heart! A man who-"

"Okay, okay. It's a man; I get the picture. And yeah, it's dad. Oh, looks like the voodoo thing was bigger than he thought!" Dean squinted, trying to see in the darkness. "Wow. That's a lot of dolls. Destroying them without harming the subject is going to be a real bitch for dad to do."

"Could you pay attention to the bigger picture? Your father is alone on Christmas as well, and you knew he would be! Yet, you didn't reach out, or offer to go on this hunt with him. No, you ran off on your own to go destroy an innocent one of my brethren in a quarry!"

"Innocent? That ghost killed three people, and threw rocks at a lot more. It needed to be destroyed, and the voodoo thing did too. It only made sense to split up."

"But why didn't you call your father? Wish him the best on Christmas Eve? Tell him how much you love him?" Present seemed completely unaware of the gagging sounds Dean was making, which, considering how loud they were, was quite a feat.

"Because if I did, dad would be exorcising me in a second to kill whatever son of a bitch was making me go all lovey-dovey and sentimental. Trust me, hell'll have frozen over by the time we have that whole 'I love you so much!' conversation."

"He wants desperately to be reassured that he was a good father!" snapped the ghost, indignant. "Do you know how much every parent craves that reassurance? Wants to know that they succeeded? But how could you, Mister I'm-So-Emotionally-Unattached?"

Dean raised an eyebrow. "Is this about me or you? 'Cause you sound like you're channeling your daddy issues from beyond the grave, and if that's the case, why don't you just take me back to the motel and tell me where you're buried so that I can salt and burn your bones, and relieve the pain?"

"This is about you, and nobody else. Now-"

"If this is just about me, then why show dad and Lisa? They're not me." When he was in the mood to make wise-ass comments (which was fairly often), Dean didn't bother to hold back. He'd go all the way.

Present took a deep breath, and slowly let it out. Dean had dealt with that reaction many times before. He just ignored it and looked down with interest, watching as his father went about his work. "You're _sure_ he can't see or hear us? Not even with the electromagnetic frequency detectors he has? I mean, it must take a lot of energy for you to be keeping us invisible. You should be giving off one hell of a strong field."

"Well, do you see him using those? If he were, then yes, we would be in a bit of a situation, but since he isn't, we are completely undetectable."

"That still doesn't make sense. Ghosts don't just kidnap people. What are you, a death omen? Or just some pissed off spirit?"

"Do you really think that I would choose to explain all of the world's mysteries to you? You hardly know anything about the spirit world. But that isn't important right now. Come, the night grows short, and you have still more to see!" There was another flash of light, another drum solo inside his head, and then Dean and the ghost were floating over the bar that he had just left a few hours ago.

"Do you recognize this place? A place where lost souls go to gather, where pain is drowned in drink and tears. Where hope dies, and faith in a god changes to faith in a bottle. Where-"

"Yes, I recognize it, okay? It's the bar that I was just in. Bad food, decent drinks, great prices. Three stars out of five on the Dean Winchester bar-scale. Happy now?"

"I will be full of cheer when you inform me of the name of it."

"The name? What am I, a phone book? I don't notice the name when I'm in pain from having a few tons of gravel thrown at me by a pissed-off ghost while I burn his bones. I just notice how quickly I can smother my physical self out with whatever drinks are on the menu."

"Smother your physical self, you say? And what of your emotional being?" Present looked smug.

"My emotional being contains scars from never getting my father's approval that I can never escape."

The ghost glanced at him, looking surprised and startled, before a self-satisfied smirk spread across his transparent features. "So you're finally getting in touch with your vulnerable side! It takes a real man to know his emotions, Dean Winchester, and repent for his sins of drinking. In fact-"

"I was kidding. My emotional well-being is pretty damn fine." Dean snorted; were all ghosts this naïve? He usually didn't get the chance to talk to them before killing them, but if he could screw with all of their minds as easily as he could with this one's, than he was more than willing to try doing things differently.

"That's not funny. See that man down there?" Present pointed to where a drunkard, who Dean could recall seeing when he had first gone into the bar, was seated on a stool, slumped over and possibly sleeping. "He drinks alone tonight, this holy eve!"

"I thought you said it was 1:00. Doesn't that mean it's already Christmas?"

"Oh, that doesn't matter! It's a minor detail! The point is, he is alone on the night when he needs family and friends most –but he has none! He spent his life drinking, and only having relationships of the sexual sort with women, never allowing himself to love! This man could very easily be you, Dean Winchester! You!"

"Hey, first of all, that man looks nothing like me." That was true; the drunk was slumped over the bar, but a long, dark beard was still visible, and it was pretty clear that exercise and healthy eating habits weren't a high priority on his list. "Second, you're acting like all I do is get drunk and have sex. And I mean, I'm not saying that I _don't_ do those things, but the hunt takes first priority. If I happen to need to sleep with a pretty girl to get some information out of her, or if the people who have what I need to know happen to frequent taverns, that's not my fault. It's the hunter's lifestyle."

"That's a pathetic excuse. Hunter's lifestyle? You can break away from that! Your brother certainly did!"

"Brother? Oh, no." Dean was starting to get a bad feeling about this. "You leave Sammy out of this. I swear, if you take me to Stanford, I'll-"

"Too late." Another flash of light, this one seemingly made brighter by Present's glee, and they were floating above a party. "Look at your brother, who is living such a normal life! Studying hard, but balancing that with a genuine love for his family."

Dean stared down at the flashing lights and hordes of dancing bodies. It didn't take him long to locate Sam, who was talking to a very pretty girl, wearing very little. Sam looked… out-of-place, as though he wanted the torture session to end, but he was holding a drink in his hand, and hey, at least he was trying to have a real college experience, instead of just reading his books and acing his courses. "Uh, I hate to be the one to bring it up, but you do realize that he's probably getting drunk down there, right?"

"Well, he's doing so reluctantly. That's something. And I'll bet you anything he'll call you and your father tomorrow, and wish you both a very merry Christmas!"

"I'll bet you more that he won't, seeing as he swore never to contact dad again, and I don't think he was too pleased with me when he left, either. Sammy's just going to have to spend the holiday with all of his great new college buddies." And actually, that did kind of hurt, but Dean would be telling a shrink that before he told the ghost.

"And you feel no emotions on that at all? None?"

"Well, gee, give me a moment to think. No, I –hey! Sammy, nice going there!" The girl his brother had been talking to had wrapped her arms around his neck, nearly causing him to spill his drink. Turning his head to face the ghost, he remarked with a smirk on his face, "I'm pretty sure _he_ isn't going to be alone for Christmas!"

"Oh, for Pete's sake! Fine, then, Dean Winchester. I try to do a kind thing, and have you repent for your sins. I try to get you to see the error of your ways. You don't want that? Fine. But please understand that I won't be helping you any longer –and that includes assisting you in getting back to that motel room of yours." There was a flash of light, and Present disappeared. Dean stayed.

He also fell, down to the hard, hard floor, and onto several enthusiastic dancers, who screamed as he bumped into them. Apparently, they could now see him. That was good to know.

"What the hell? Where did he come from?" Voices surrounded him from all sides as Dean struggled back to his feet, noticing that the college students had all started to cluster and close in on him, like hunters moving in on their prey.

Suddenly, one voice rose above the rest. "_Dean_?!"

"Sammy! Good to see you."

Well, shit. This was going to be hard to explain.


End file.
